Armor design issues & customisation

Vindold

1. Design issue

Some time ago I've noticed weird and sad thing about new armor sets, I thought that this happened due to deadlines, but sadly I was wrong...here is what I'm talking about:

For ex. Annihilarch chosen:
Front: amazing

Back:

Ordinator:

Am I the only one who thinks that removing 'skirt' from our butts is not a good idea from aesthetic point of view and also lazy?
I've never seen such poor design descision in any game, movie etc for obvious reasons...I think that such decision came simply out of laziness, less rigging work, that's it..it simply ruins armor sets, they look unfinished, silly and it creates an impression of how Devs 'care' about this game.

2. Customization
We got so many pants for customisation, but skirts are almost non existent, instead of separating skirt from chest piece we got pants. Please, start adding skirt piece as well, everyone know how easy it's to do, they are much more needed than cloth pants piece.

Also where is hide shoulders option? Yep same question over and over again. We've seen it looong ago, such feature is in the game already...also hide hip flaps, gloves, belts, even chest pieces(because of tattoo and skins) such options should've been available from day 1, but instead we got skirt removed from our butts, lol.
After so many years, I hoped to see cloaks...GW2 finally managed to implement cloaks, I hope ESO will be able to do it as well...

Syldras

Well, as I see it these aren't skirts with a part at the back missing, but a kind of hip protection (two single flaps) attached to the belt. In my opinion it does look a bit weird, especially on the Ordinator, but in the end it's just a question of taste. I know there have been people years ago who complained they do not want a butt flap (that clips through the saddle while riding) on every single style. And skirts do exist, athough I agree that pants are by far more common.

Danikat

I couldn't see anything wrong with the screenshots until I read your explaination, maybe because I normally play khajiit and argonians and they always have the back flap removed to make room for the tail so I'm used to it looking that way. I don't think it would bother me though, even on my human and elf characters where it might be more noticable.

I do agree that more skirts which aren't tied to the chest piece would be nice.

Vindold

Syldras wrote: »

In my opinion it does look a bit weird, especially on the Ordinator, but in the end it's just a question of taste.

It's weird indeed) there is some "rules" in art no wonder you feel this way, it's not just a matter of taste it's an obvious mistake)

Syldras

Vindold wrote: »

Syldras wrote: »

In my opinion it does look a bit weird, especially on the Ordinator, but in the end it's just a question of taste.

It's weird indeed) there is some "rules" in art no wonder you feel this way, it's not just a matter of taste it's an obvious mistake)

So what rule in art does this break? The Golden Ratio?

TaSheen

Many of us prefer no flaps at all....

Vindold

Syldras wrote: »

Vindold wrote: »

Syldras wrote: »

In my opinion it does look a bit weird, especially on the Ordinator, but in the end it's just a question of taste.

It's weird indeed) there is some "rules" in art no wonder you feel this way, it's not just a matter of taste it's an obvious mistake)

So what rule in art does this break? The Golden Ratio?

Rules for balance, space, weight.
You look at it and you know that it will be better with that flap on butt, not to mention that it protects our precious butt)
Look at top fantasy arts, games, damn, even Skyrim..all skyrim models(if my memory serves me well) done it this way, and it looks better this way because it's just right.
There is an exceptions ofc, but it depends on many things, and this one is not one of them.

Look at Ordinator armor..they tried to make it look like Indoril set from TES3, but Indoril got some sort of half skirt, now look at legs and you'll see this skirt just like on Annihilarch chosen(I bet that initially it was a half skirt), it looks like an actual Ordinator half skirt from TES3 until you see it from behind, it's just like they deleted part of it.
To me it looks like 3d artists simply didn't want to mess with skirt piece because it's much more faster to rig legs than skirt, that's it.

Vindold

TaSheen wrote: »

Many of us prefer no flaps at all....

I prefer to have a toggle option some flaps can be good if done properly, always nice to have an options instead of none.

Carcamongus

That doesn't bother me that much, but that's because I always choose legs that include a skirt (I'm sure there might be a better word for it, but you get my meaning). The downside is that the flaps may occasionally clip annoyingly with the leg armor.

M0ntie

Agree. His butt looks exposed.
Also there are soooo many pants with little difference - they could make a few more that are skirts or kilts.
And again and again players wish for the function to hide the ugly hip flaps, but what do we get but more armour with ugly similar hip flaps.
When playing the game, small differences in textures are unnoticeable, so significant outline changes, like skirts and no hip flaps/shoulders are needed to make a difference.

swook33b16_ESO

Vindold wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Many of us prefer no flaps at all....

I prefer to have a toggle option some flaps can be good if done properly, always nice to have an options instead of none.

Yes I would like a toggle too. Should never been removed in the first place. Should been an option instead. For me some armors got ruined with no Flaps, I had to use a diffrent armor piece to make it work but shouldn't have to be force to use something else. Sure some have texture error when crouching but I prefer that than having no flap on the back of the armor.

Or they should have made one armor of each with the flap and one with out flap. More options is better.
I hope they fix the armor with flaps on the armors that have no flaps when they decided this change on armors.

I was thinking of making a thread about this, but Im glad others are botered with this issue as well.

fizzylu

I can say I'm one of the people who hates that the back of armors do not have the flaps. I think it makes the armor look like some weird jumpsuit from behind haha and with capes not being an option (seriously, this is a big issue for me. I lowkey get angry when I see concept/loading screen art with capes) there's not even a workaround to make it look less goofy. It extremely limits my choice on making outfits for my character. I also usually hate the side/hip armor things which limits me even more which is extra not fun. I'm not the biggest fan of ESO's armor design to begin with so it'd be really cool if it at least had toggle options so I could make some things I do think look decent more to my liking, but sadly I cannot see them ever doing this.
And I hate to say it, but I've gotten even more picky after getting back into GW2 and playing FFXIV for the first time last year. GW2 definitely has my favorite armor designs and outfitting system (there's also capes). FFXIV just has some truly fire armor designs period, I especially love how jewelry ACTUALLY shows. More games should seriously learn from that.

nCats

Necroing this as a voice of support. I really hate the back of Annihilarch's chosen, I semi-fixed it for myself by not wearing the meridian heavy that h as a sort of a rear belt thing.

I believe skirts should be a separate customisation option that overrides the default flaps of the cuirasses, and yes, lots of these armours need back flaps. Some armours like Mornard could use back flaps for better aesthetics.

Soarora

I think it’s because of beastfolk— a flap in the back would look weird with a tail. I do think many chest pieces look unbalanced or weird though. We really don’t need flaps on everything.

As for skirts, I think we have plenty of various lengths.

nCats

Soarora wrote: »

I think it’s because of beastfolk— a flap in the back would look weird with a tail. I do think many chest pieces look unbalanced or weird though. We really don’t need flaps on everything.

As for skirts, I think we have plenty of various lengths.

Usually flaps get removed on beast races, cf the armours that have them like the original blue motifs. And yes, some chests do indeed look weird with flaps, I would foremost welcome a customisation option here.

The problem with skirts as pants option is that they combine two elements in fact. For the annihilarch motif above, I think you want to have a short flap-like skirt/tabard over the greaves (cf other TES games Daedric motif). There are some skirts/greaves combos like this but not quite in the spirit of Annihilarch's motif.

So it would be simpler to give options to add something like an extra skirt to the existing cuirass-greaves combo.

rpa

It's to accomodate tails which are made of cryptonite and just clip trough armour and anything really.